God Comes to Save Us

In today's first reading, Jeremiah 23: 5-8, God, through the prophet Jeremiah,  excitedly reminds us of the coming of the Messiah: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David; as king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land. In his day Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell in security. This is the name they give him: 'The Lord our justice'."

Not only shall Judah be saved and Israel dwell in security, when God reigns, but so, too, shall any other country or nation. When God reigns in our hearts, in the heart of any nation or any government,  then, and only then, shall a person or a governor or leader lead wisely. Not otherwise.

How often I becry the fact that there is so much injustice in the world and so many unwise governors and leaders of the nations, so many unwise persons in the  Congress of the U.S..  However, those very facts remind me that only God is just. Only God is righteous. Only God governs wisely. We all fall short, including myself.  We are not God!  We need God's intervention. We need God's salvation!  Without grace, all of us will succumb to Satan, the  Father of Lies.  We are vulnerable, no matter what our position in life, no matter how many degrees we might have and no matter how wealthy or powerful we think we are.   Only by our cooperation with grace, our recognizing our need for a Messiah and the gift of salvation which God offers, will we resist Satan's lies. Relying on ourselves without calling upon the Lord, we are likely to continue to allow Satan, an intelligent fallen angel, to have  a heyday in his dealings with  us.  God alone can save us from the intelligent, cunning, deceitful ways of Satan, who roams this earth looking for someone to devour!

We thank you, Lord, for sending us Jesus, our Savior!  You alone are more powerful than Satan. And it is you who are our side, fighting Satan on our behalf!  Satan will not stand!

"Look! Those Slain" all around Us (Jer 14: 17-22)

In today’s first reading, Jeremiah 14: 17-22, Jeremiah laments that if he walks “out into the field, look! those slain by the sword,” and, if he enters the city, “look! those consumed by hunger.”  If Jeremiah enters the fields and cities of our world, he will come across persons slain by drones, rockets, gunfire, grenades, bombs and other weapons of violence.  He will enter refugee camps and the slums of our cities and find those “consumed by hunger” and thirst. Like Jeremiah and his our ancestors, we “wait for peace, to no avail; for a time of healing, but terror comes instead.” Do we,  like Jeremiah and, in our day, Pope Francis, “recognize…our wickedness, the guilt of our…[ancestors, our predecessors, our government officials engaging in corrupt decision-making, our clergy abusing vulnerable persons, parents harming their children, and on and on].” Do we acknowledge, as Jeremiah and Pope Francis do, “that we have sinned against” the Lord?

We certainly deserve to be asked, as Jeremiah asked his people,  among “the nations’ idols is there any that gives rain,” are there any that reconcile enemies, makes whole that which is broken,  frees those who are enslaved, imprisoned, maimed by corruption, blinded by sin; any that frees prisoners of obsessive gambling, abusive behaviors toward  children and youth and women, releases perpetrators of violence, slaves of deceit, greed, selfishness, and/or trapped  into all of the “isms” that dominate our cultures?

With the prophet Jeremiah, we, too,  in our day and age need to cry out: “Is it not you alone, O Lord, our God, to whom we look? You alone have done all these things” that lead to salvation,  reconciliation, restoration, and the  righting of wrongs being done to millions of people in the world of today. O, God, “[f]or the glory of your name, deliver us” (today responsorial psalm).

Blessed by the Lord, our God, our Deliverer

In today’s first reading, Dan 3: 14-20, 91-91, 95, the King asked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, “is it true…that you will not serve my god, or worship the golden statue that I set up? Be ready now to fall down and worship the statue I had made, whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet, flute, lyre, harp, psaltery, bagpipe, and all the other musical instruments. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do not succumb to the King’s demands and are bound and thrown into the white-hot furnace. When the King peers into the furnace and sees three men unfettered and unhurt walking  on the red-hot coals with the Son of Man in their midst, he proclaims “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel to deliver the servants who trusted in him.”

In the Gospel , Jn 8:31-42, Jesus, the one true God, reveals the Father’s will and  challenges the Scribes and Pharisees who are planning to kill him.  They carry out their plans and Jesus is executed by crucifixion on the cross.  Death has no power over Him.  He is risen from the dead and now sits at the right of God in glory as king “until he has made his enemies his footstool” (1 Cor 15: 25-26).

The three men in Daniel testify to the power of the one true God to save us from harm and set us free.  Jesus actually does save us and set us free from Satan’s snares to worship false gods. Those false gods are the focus of many of our commercials. Marketing experts “sound the trumpet, flute, lyre, harp, psaltery, bagpipes and all the other musical instruments” to  lure people into worshipping consumerism, materialism, individualism, sexism, and the ego’s demands to exert  power over others, use pleasure at other’s expense, and accumulate wealth for selfish ends.

We, too, are faced every day with the choice Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego made when they said to the king:  “…we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up."  Yes, every day we, too, are faced with the blaring invitations to worship the gods of this world, of pagan cultures and pagan societies or to worship the one true God and to listen to Jesus’ Gospel messages. Which choice will I make today?